August 08, 2008

Talking with Morgan Taylor

Morgan Taylor makes a living playing music with a cartoon. His creation, Gustafer Yellowgold, is the product of years spent listening to hand-me-down LPs and watching Saturday morning cartoons. But while most adults grow up and grow out of their rock-star dreams or their plans to illustrate comic books, Morgan Taylor has stayed true to his passions—even if Gustafer and his animated pals developed as a happy accident.

Taylor’s music-accompanied cartoon is by no means for children only. In fact, says Taylor, Gustafer’s message is the same for both adults and kids: “Slow down to look at the small, beautiful things. Don’t take them for granted.” Says Taylor of his creation, “I really write for the adults,” but, by keeping it “simple, funny and colorful,” Gustafer and his pals are made for everyone.

Growing up, “whatever I was doing, I had to have music going at the same time,” Taylor tells me. “And my mom too, she always had the radio on in the mornings when I would be getting ready to go to school. So I have this ‘comfort food’ relationship with all the ’70s AM, soft-rock stuff.” In 2003, while leafing through the collection of songs he’d written, Taylor realized that a cast of characters had evolved. Taylor explains, “When I went through my back catalog of songs and pulled all the weird ones together, I found that I had an entire cast waiting to be joined. Gustafer’s biographical song (‘I’m From The Sun’), Slim the Eel (‘Your Eel’), Forrest Applecrumbie, the well-dressed dinosaur (‘Pterodactyl Tuxedo’), the band of bees with a crying leader (‘Mint Green Bee’), Sisson the Worm (‘Tiny Purple Moon’). It was as if it was all scattered around on cassette tapes waiting to be assembled. A happy accident, really.”

Despite the plots and quirky characters, Taylor was still not aware of just how much he could make of his creation. “The animation part of Gustafer we thought would be a distant eventuality, but it actually happened through an acquaintance right at the onset. We showed him the Gustafer picture books and he explained how easily it could be animated, so we paid him and animator to make the Gustafer drawings ‘move.’” From there, Gustafer became a DVD cartoon. His friends and adventures are narrated by Taylor, who also strums the sound track.

Performances consist of huge, moving images of Gustafer and friends, with live music and narration by Taylor and his band. Visit the “Shows” link on Gustafer Yellowgold’s Web site to find out where Taylor and Gustaffer will be next.

Comments

Gustafer Yellowgold is like the Dr. Suess or Shel Silverstein (The Giving Tree, Where The Sidewalk Ends) of our time.

Its life lessons about friendship, acceptance, nonconformity and ingenuity are charming and wonderful to behold -- in DVD form, or in live performance, as our family has had the pleasure to see multiple times.

Gustafer's "moving book" format is also a great tool for early readers, and infectious enough to bear repeated listens without driving us crazy (like most other modern kids' music does.)

But our favorite thing about it is that it never talks down to kids. Gustafer intuitively plays to a child's inherent humanity and emotional intelligence, and that alone is a beautiful thing.